Physicist Calls UFO Cover-up a 'Cosmic Watergate'

We're not sure if this stock photo includes a real alien or if perhaps it's a creative sculpture, but we can say with some authority that the thing in the jar resembles the popular image of aliens.

Credit: Dreamstime

Stanton Friedman is convinced that extraterrestrial aliens are
visiting us, and have been for a long time. There's nothing odd about
that; many people believe in UFOs and aliens.

But Friedman is not your typical tin foil-hatted UFO
nut. For one thing, he has a Master's degree in nuclear physics and
worked for decades on fusion and fission rockets for some of the
world's top aerospace companies.

Friedman joins other famous people with advanced degrees who are
firmly convinced about things for which there is little hard evidence.
Former Apollo astronaut Edgar
Mitchell, for example, shares Friedman's beliefs about UFOs and
alien cover-ups (Mitchell admits that he never saw any UFOs during his
time with NASA, but believes that in 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, "There
was a UFO crash. There was an alien spacecraft").

Another respected UFO believer was the late Harvard psychiatrist John
Mack, who spent years studying people allegedly abducted, probed, and
experimented upon by aliens.

Friedman has cultivated an image of a maverick, a renegade scientist
brave enough to tell the world what he knows about flying saucers.
He has spent the last half-century researching UFO
claims, and his conclusion is that "Some UFOs are intelligently
controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft, and this is the biggest story of
the millennium.... I'm convinced we're dealing here with a cosmic
Watergate," he told AOL News this week. "A few people within major
governments have known since at least 1947 that some UFOs are alien
spacecraft."
According to Friedman, there are two main reasons that the hard
evidence of alien presence is not better known:

The first is that a decades-long global conspiracy is afoot;
high-ranking officials have carefully covered up all the hard evidence
of UFOs. The second that scientists who are in a position to help expose
the truth are afraid—not just of those enforcing the conspiracy, but of
admitting they were wrong. Friedman believes that the real truth about
UFOs will be revealed soon.

"I'm still optimistic that, within my lifespan—and I'm 75—we'll get
at least a part of the story, that we're not alone in the universe," he
said.

He may be right. It's possible that next week, next year, or next
decade the long-sought and ever-elusive hard evidence proving that
aliens exist will finally surface. However, Friedman might note a
"curse" on UFO conspiracy
theorists that famed skeptical UFO investigator Phillip Klass
issued in his last will and testament:

"No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs
than you know today," Klass wrote. "You will never know any more about
what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any
more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you
know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified
about UFOs as you are today."

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer science
magazine. His new book Scientific Paranormal Investigation has
just been released; this and his other books and projects can be found
on his website.
His Bad
Science column appears regularly on LiveScience.